I continue to see assorted rants about the 'true meaning of Xmas'. Last evening, i made the grievous error of inserting some historical facts into yet another person's post on the "meaning of Xmas", and i really should have heeded my own recent conclusion about inserting facts into any discussion that contains right wing spin instead :-). When these folks state things that they believe according to them they are 'sharing', but i failed to remember that any REPLY which states anything else is an 'attack on their faith'.
Dec 25 means to EACH INDIVIDUAL whatever it means. If it's a celebration of the birth of JC for YOU, that does NOT harm anyone else. If you're tickled that the solar system continues to operate and the days will now start getting longer, that also doesn't hurt anyone else. If you just LIKE the holiday and attach NOTHING 'supernatural' to the days, as i do, that ALSO isn't hurting anyone.
For some, it's a celebration of the birth of their religion's key figure, a man whose birth their own scholars place at another time. That's nice for them, but they need to get past the idea that stealing things gives you full and binding legal ownership of them. There's very little that's 'pure Christian' in the customs and rituals celebrated by Christians in western civilization. Most of them were 'borrowed' (subverted?) from a previous pagan practice/custom of one sort or the other. Christian apologists have put a nice Christiany spin on them, and if that's the meaning YOU choose to attach to those things good for you, but PLEASE... ALL OF YOU... stop claiming you know the REAL meaning of Christmas. There IS no single one 'real' meaning that applies to every living person.
And for that matter, all you pagans/wiccans, you can spare me, too. You ARE NOT 'faithfully following the pre-Christian beliefs', so you can stop claiming that as well. You can't be. The people who knew what those were were all assimilated and/or killed by the Catholic Church in the dark ages (and then again by protestant churches once those sprang up). These groups did a remarkably thorough job. What we know about these beliefs is what their ENEMIES recorded about them. There are NO accounts of their beliefs or practices from themselves that survive in any form. PERIOD.
I suppose the occasional individual survived, but the LEADERS were found, tortured, and killed. Unless you think that Catholicism would still be exactly what it once was, all beliefs exactly the same, if all of the leadership were killed, and only a few old parisioners managed to survive to tell their children what THEY thought it meant.
Wicca was MADE UP out of the ideas of one man and is unlikely to have much REAL association with 'the old ways' because he didn't know what they are... and i'll leave it to the reader to draw any comparisons to another religion that we know of that was recently created by an author. It's NOT a continuous line of beliefs 'practiced since before the birth of Christ', it's a fabrication from the mind of one man whose scholarship in general is in serious dispute. It's fine for you to practice it, but don't present it as anything but what it is.
So, while i share your irritation with the "We stole this date, and now it's OURS OURS OURS" Christians who rant on and on at this time of year, here's a fact: "Yes, they stole the customs and rituals, but they didn't steal them from YOU." Most of you came to Wicca/paganism PRECISELY because you were either wounded by, unimpressed with, or bored with the religion in which you were raised - generally some flavor of Christianity. To make that transition, you had to learn to ignore what Christians say. You can extend that to one more area, can't you? Wish us all a 'Happy Yule', but don't act EXACTLY like the members of the religion you had the sense to LEAVE and complain about how anyone else observes the day, OK?
It's a nice holiday. We could all just enjoy it without trying to impose our specific perspective n what it is on ANYONE else. Seriously, it's POSSIBLE. I'll be celebrating Xmas in a few days with my dear wife, Melissa. She's a Christian, and she likes all the Christian-related stuff. We'll go to Midnight Mass, because SHE enjoys that. She'll bake me some cookies (maybe even some buckeyes if i'm REALLY good!), because *i* enjoy that. We have a tree and mistletoe up because we BOTH enjoy that.
Plus, there will be ham!
